On June 13 I discovered half-a-dozen of these caterpillars
crawling around on the house siding nearest the River Birch. Someone at BugGuide quickly told me they are Mourning Cloaks; Wagner says they feed on birch, among others, where the larvae “remain together until they are fully-fed and finally move off their food plant to pupate – they may even leave more or less en masse”. So I rescued four of them to the inside of the screen porch. By Noon of June 16 two had gone elsewhere, and two had assumed this posture:
Who knew how long they’d hang like this before making any changes? Not this Bozo, who didn’t even bother to look at them again until June 17 at 5 PM, by when they had both become thus:
|
Their larval skins were beneath each, with skull case, stockings, and every bloody thorn more or less intact, but the whole shrunken to an eighth its living length:
|
|
|
On June 23 I had to be away for five days, so the screen porch had to be left open. Returning the evening of June 28 I found both had emerged and were hanging next to their pupal cases. Within hours one had moved 8 feet over to where the other was still hanging quite still:
By evening of June 29 the more active adult was gone, the other, still here. So the short of it is, I missed most of the good stuff.